This is a question that’s popped again a few times over the past few weeks, so I thought it would make an interesting blog post to talk about.

There are some definite answers and some looser answers!

I know that marketing on social media can take up time and the urge to create one message and share it everywhere is great. However, there are sometimes when it not good practice and other times when it takes a little intuition from you.

Cross posting from Twitter to Facebook

A very definite no here.

If you write a tweet, you’ll hopefully be using hashtags to get your tweet seen by more people, also potentially a link to a website and not always an image.

A tweet on your Facebook newsfeed will look just like that – a tweet.

Hashtags don’t translate well to Facebook, people generally don’t use them so they look out of place.

Facebook prefers you not to be sending traffic outside of Facebook, so you’ll potentially get less of a reach on your Facebook post if your tweet includes a url.

And there is little point doing a Facebook post without an image, so if your tweet has no image, cross-posting it to Facebook will mean no-one will really see it.

Basically, your tweet in Facebook will look odd, the reach will be terrible (so very few people will see it) and your audience will know it’s a tweet and feel less loved and less looked after – not how you want your potential clients to feel.

Cross posting from Facebook to twitter

Also, a definite no!

Facebook posts by nature tend to be more than 280 characters, so you’ll end up with half your message on twitter and a link to read the rest in Facebook.

No-one (or barely no-one) is going to click the link to read the rest of the post.

So your message is essentially lost and will confuse your twitter audience.

Plus your twitter audience will know that you can’t really be bothered to speak to them in twitter, so will feel less loved and less looked after – again not how you want your potential clients to feel.

Cross posting from Facebook to Instagram

You can’t really do this – so it’s a no!

Cross posting from Twitter to Instagram

Can’t really do this one either – so it’s a no!

Cross posting from Instagram to Facebook

This is a sometimes answer.

I do it a lot and I get a great response on both Facebook and Instagram. They’re both owned by Facebook and so have a similar look and feel.

However, I know that there are some types of Instagram posts that I create that don’t resonate as strongly with my Facebook audience and so I tend not to cross-post those.

The answer here is to know your Facebook audience and measure and learn what they respond to and what gets a good conversation going and a good reach.

Cross posting from Instagram to twitter

I do this every single time I post to Instagram and get a great response on both platforms.

That way I post to twitter with the actual gorgeous Instagram image, rather than a blue url link to Instagram

Cross posting from Instagram to Linkedin

I’m just testing this one out myself.

You can also set up an applet for this in ifttt – see comment above. Worthwhile trialing and see how your audience responds.

Hope that helps with this query. The bottom line is that wherever you’re posting you want your audience to feel loved and valued and you want to give them content that is valuable.

If you can save a little time using the magic of Instagram to spread it’s joy to a few different platform, and your audience responds well then why not?

There is an argument that you have different audiences across different platforms and so you should create different content for each of them. And that is true if you are a large business with a big workforce, lots of products and multiple ideal customers. But if you are running a small business, with one ideal customer and a few products with little time on your hands, and your audience seems to like it – then go for it!